Functioning of terms denoting the five kinds of livestock in Mongolian proverbs

It is commonly known that Mongols traditionally breed five kinds of livestock: horses, cows, sheep, goats, and camels. There is a special system of terms denoting livestock of different sex and age in Mongolian. The article examines the usage of these terms in Mongolian proverbs and sayings. The aim of the research was to find out (i) what image is associated with every kind of livestock, (ii) which terms are used in the proverbs and which are restricted to nonproverbal usage. Volumes of Mongolian proverbs and scholarly works on this subject were used as the source of material for the research. The material was obtained using the continuous sampling method, then it was devided into five groups according to the terms used (one general term denoting a kind of livestock formed a separate group). After that, linguoculturological analysis comprising a contrastive method was carried out to study the selected proverbs. The Mongolian proverbs provide a great variety of metaphors and comparisons exploiting the terms denoting domestic animals. Most of semantic parallels found in such proverbs are between people and horses. The terms denoting cattle, goats and camels are also used in comparisons with people; negative traits of the animals are paralleled with those of humans. The terms denoting sheep are used in descriptions of the world order rather than compared with human qualities. The terms denoting horses are used in 60,3% of the selected proverbs and sayings. The terms denoting cattle are used in 20,5% of the proverbs. The terms denoting different kinds of camels rank third and are used in 9,9% of the proverbs, while terms for goats and sheep can be found in 7,9% and 6% of the proverbs correspondingly.